


Two Headed, Single Minded

by heartslogos



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-17
Updated: 2015-10-17
Packaged: 2018-04-26 19:30:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5017495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartslogos/pseuds/heartslogos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Ronan before him is different. Tense and strung, wrung out and loose. He is at once both his Ronan, the Ronan of before, and Kavinsky's Ronan, the Ronan on fire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Headed, Single Minded

He can't get it out of his head, and his hands are unsteady and shaking on the Pig's wheel -  
  
Ronan, wild and terrible, _beautiful_ , still with his face painted red, blue, green, violet and a terrible, terrible shade of white under the fireworks. Uncontrolled, too real and too strange to be anything but real. Ronan, with blood on his hands and something snapped and frantic in his eyes. Desperate, a wolf lunging and a snake with venom foaming at its fangs. So terribly _alive_ in ways Gansey doesn't think should even count as alive.  
  
Kavinsky - Kavinsky just as wild and terrible but not _Ronan_. Never Ronan. Wild and reckless. Chaotic.  
  
Both of them, nightmares and dreams that came to life and clashed like Titans. Gods.  
  
Gansey can't stop thinking about it, Ronan and Kavinsky, Kavinsky and Ronan.  
  
The dragon. The nightmare. The fire.  
  
The text, the Pig, all of it. It spins in his head and they need to talk about it. He needs to - _they_ need to. Ronan. Ronan, I've let you - us - go without words for too long. It all spins in his head because it has always been _Ronan_ , even when it _isn't_. They aren't separate. Ronan is everything Gansey knows, fore and afterthought even when he's thinking about how his heart fills to bursting not kissing Blue and the absolute wonder of Adam Parrish's eyes, the debt he owes to Noah and Glendower. It is _Ronan_. Because, all jokes aside, Ronan is his.  
  
And he is, in some ways, Ronan's. As much as _anything_ is ever _Ronan's_.  
  
Noah is a flash in his rearview mirror that makes him swear and almost lose control of the Pig.  
  
"It isn't always about _you_." Noah says, quietly, a voice that seems to be directly in his ear, cold and sending a rain of goosebumps over his skin even though he's hunched in the backseat. "It isn't about _you_."  
  
Gansey opens his mouth to reply but Noah is gone and Monmouth Manufacturing looms, illuminated in the night in front of him.  
  
Gansey can't get the image of Ronan and Kavinsky out of his head. Unreachable, unknowable. _Untouchable_. In some world ruled by some laws and logic that Gansey isn't privy to.  
  
There are a lot of things, Gansey thinks - Adam's scorn, Blue's closed eyes, Noah's fading face -, that he is not privy to.  
  
Ronan is on the ground floor, with Chainsaw on his shoulder. Perched there with her head tilted and wings half-closed half-opened like some faerie creature whispering advice into Ronan's ear in a language only Ronan knows. Kerah, _kerah_. Ronan, _Ronan_. There are many languages that only Ronan knows.  
  
Sometimes Gansey can only look at Ronan and see ciphers and enigmas, alive and ever shifting. Do you _want_ me to know you? Am I _meant_ to know you?  
  
(Gansey knows Ronan in his bones, and he knows that Ronan knows him back. They are faces. Gansey and Ronan. Two-headed, but each head speaks a different tongue. Two-hearted, and each heart loves differently.)  
  
And so is his nightmare, when Gansey walks into the light. It is hideous to look at directly, under the harsh lights that reveal every single facet of its dreamed and impossible existence. White with tinges of pink, blood and veins. Like an almost dead-thing that refuses to die, something that has been buried underground for so long and never meant to see the light. Something that would burn if the sun touched it, something that could, perhaps, touch the sun out of spite and burn itself.  
  
But it is beautiful in all the ways the things Ronan touches is beautiful. Weaponized beauty.  
  
(Sometimes, when Gansey looks at Ronan he sees some impossible thing. Marvelous creature. Walking into a room, Ronan fills space. He demands attention but to look at him is to turn to stone, he draws people in but to touch him is to be cut.  
  
Gansey has had ages of exposure to Ronan's cutting. His hands are nothing but scars when it comes to Ronan. And he will never let go. They are his prizes, proof.  
  
I will not leave you, Ronan Lynch. I will never leave _you_.)  
  
Ronan looks at his creature in a way that Gansey associates with images of kings upon paupers, fae unto humans, angels onto mortals, devils onto souls. Gods unto their people.  
  
If Ronan is a god, then he wonders what he is. The proclaimer of his gospel? Gansey will always believe in Ronan - the Ronan of before, the Ronan of after, the Ronan of now.  
  
Does Ronan believe in Gansey? He must, Gansey thinks. And there are a thousand and one things that he wants to say, doesn't know how to say -  
  
Which one will hurt Ronan? Which word will send Ronan hurtling back into that dark space of knives and brambles? Which words can Gansey use to say _I love you,_ I was terrified, why _Kavinsky_ , why not me, why couldn't I help you, are you _crazy_ I love the Pig but I love you _more_ , the Pig is a car, you are my brother, my other self, the King at my side, my Right or Left Hand, I told you to dream me a world while we were apart but don't dream me a world without you, _never_ dream a world without you Ronan Lynch, I don't want a world where I am not with you -  
  
Gansey opens his mouth and he doesn't know which of these will come out first, which of these will send Ronan away from him with knives in his spine and nitroglycerin in his footsteps.  
  
But Ronan cuts through him - Ronan is an instrument of cutting. Cutting words, cutting beauty. Cutting through space to pull his desires from it, cutting through reality, cutting through the world.  
  
"It's not staying here, man. Chill." Ronan says, and Chainsaw's feathers ruffle in a way that can only be described as knowing. Ronan turns back to his creature, his nightmare, and reaches out his fingers. The nightmare offers its throat, and Ronan strokes the underside of its beaks, as if he were petting Chainsaw. Gansey watches, fascinated, as the nightmare creature's watery blue eyes flutter and flicker shut, a terrible crooning echoing from its chest, before Ronan flicks his wrist. And the nightmare blinks at him with its watery eyes and slither-scuttle-clicks its way across the floor, slinking into the velvet Hentrietta night.  
  
Gansey spares a thought to wonder where it will go, if it is safe -  
  
( _Safe as life_.)  
  
He looks at Ronan and Ronan looks at him. There are times when all he needs to do is look at Ronan and _know_ , but now his footing is unsteady, disrupted. He does not _know_.  
  
Do you know how scared I was, how frightened I was, to get that text? You scared me me, Ronan Lynch. You _scare_ me.  
  
The Ronan before him is different. Tense and strung, wrung out and loose. He is at once both his Ronan, the Ronan of before, and Kavinsky's Ronan, the Ronan on fire.  
  
Gansey knows that sometimes he - sometimes he is _overwhelming_. He is too much. How many times have Blue and Adam been angry, frustrated, explosive because of how _Gansey_ he is?  
  
He has never learned how to use his words properly. It seems that they always fail him when he needs them most. Like his mouth is nothing but bee stings.  
  
Then again, Ronan does not use words, either. Ronan is cutting looks and gestures. Ronan is something beyond words. Shapes and sensations. Unknowable.  
  
Gansey wants to tell him so many things. Ask so many things. Ronan might not answer.  
  
Gansey knows he could get Ronan to answer. He knows in a way that makes him sick-warm-whole-terrified that he could ask Ronan to do anything. Ronan may protest, Ronan may mouth off, Ronan may even spark flames, but he would do it if Gansey asked.  
  
Gansey asks the world of Ronan often, and Ronan complies.  
  
But Gansey does not want that. Gansey has never wanted that power, humbling as it is. It is not Gansey's to hold. Ronan is, and always will be, his own universe. Gansey only occupies a small part of it.  
  
Ronan and Adam, Gansey thinks, are both universes that Gansey occupies small parts of. Spinning away farther and vaster than Gansey can see. Deeper than he can know. They are all kings of different kingdoms, and no king should bow to another.  
  
(For a moment, Gansey thinks about Adam, and how stunning he is. Distant, and no matter how hard Gansey tries he cannot grasp him. Perhaps he is not meant to be held. But Gansey does not want to hold him, just _be_ with him. Like he wants to be with Ronan and Noah and Blue. He just wants them all to _be_.  
  
Why is that so hard? What is he not saying? What is he not understanding?)  
  
Gansey wants to ask about the night terrors - did they hurt you? Are you injured? Will they return? Are they worse? What causes them, how did you bring them here, what makes that one so different, what makes you different? Ronan, can I help you?  
  
He wants to ask about Kavinsky - what happened, Ronan? Why was it him? Are you alright? Did he - what did he do to you? Was it my fault? Ronan talk to me.  
  
Gansey wants to ask about Mathew, is he safe, how did Kavinsky get to him, how did you explain this all to him, what about Declan, does Delcan know, _Jesus_ , how is Gansey going to keep them together if Declan knows? Don't take him from me, Declan. Don't take him from me, not when I think I've just started to get him back.  
  
Gansey wants to ask him about the hovering thing behind their eyes and their hearts, that thing he has silently known - I love you, _too_ , Ronan, can't you see how much I _love_ you? - about the leash and the hand that holds it and swords and the hands that wield them.  
  
A leash is pulled from both ends, as they say.  
  
They are bound to each other.  
  
Ronan, have I wronged you?  
  
Gansey wants to ask him about the other things, wants to ask him about what possessed him to take the Pig, what happened to cause it to crash, about what happened while he was away, and a thousand other things that fill his head like so many buzzing wings and close his throat like so many stings.  
  
You dream me second chances, Gansey wants to say, because Gansey certainly hasn't been the one storing Epipens everywhere. I dream you second chances, too. The only difference is that mine are manifested in money and weight. What makes you think you are not worthy of my love when I am somehow worthy of yours?  
  
Why couldn't you tell me, Ronan? Why couldn't you tell any of it to me?  
  
Ronan looks into him, a challenge and a question and something puzzling. Almost the same as when Ronan was looking at the night terror. Gansey's words falter in his chest.  
  
Noah's voice is in his ear, a memory echoing against his eardrum.  
  
It's isn't about _you_.  
  
Gansey closes his mouth and holds out his hand. Ronan moves, Gansey moves. _They_ move.  
  
Gansey's hand closes over the side of Ronan's throat, fingers touching at the edge of cool and drying sweat, the rough bristle of Ronan's hair. For a moment, Gansey expects for Ronan to twist out of his grip, to slip away. But then - impossibly, _finally_ \- Ronan relaxes underneath his palm.  
  
"We need to cut it again." Gansey muses, and Ronan's mouth is a curved knife used for gutting. Ronan's hand closes around Gansey's shoulder, his neck, splayed warm and sweat damp against his pulse. A mirror that isn't.  
  
"I told you, I'd fix it." Ronan says, pride and pleasure, satisfaction like some wild cat sprawled luxuriously in his voice, blood in its fur and bones in its teeth.  
  
"Yes." Gansey says, pulling Ronan's forehead to his own, grounding and he breathes in. Chainsaw moves from Ronan's shoulder to his own. Her feathers rustle against Gansey's ear, his cheek. Her beak traces a line on his skin, a harsh and just shy of painful nip before she flies away. Gansey and Ronan watch her out of the corners of their eye before looking back at each other. "Ronan Lynch, if you ever scare me like that again I'm going to - well. I'm not quite sure, yet, what I'm going to do. But I'm sure that I'll think of something suitable in time."  
  
Understanding flows between them. Contact. Ronan's hand flexes on the side of his throat, and Gansey's hand is opposite the hooks of Ronan's brand.  
  
They are both kings, they are all kings. The heads of states. Gansey has only known Ronan for a few years, but he feels as though they have been Ronan and Gansey since forever. They have become kings together.  
  
Ronan snorts, soft and rough like scales and leather.  
  
"I never lie to you." Ronan says.  
  
Sometimes I wish you would, Gansey thinks. Closes his eyes.  
  
The points of Ronan's fingers are a command when they squeeze Gansey's skin. He opens his eyes and Ronan's are ice and storms.  
  
A question. A statement. A challenge. A hunger.  
  
Gansey exhales, slow and heavy.  
  
Don't dream a world where I cannot follow you, Gansey thinks. Don't leave me like the others do.  
  
"I'm here, Ronan." Gansey says. I am always here. I am always waiting. Looking. Searching. For you, for Adam, for Noah, for Blue, for Glendower. For _us_.

Ronan close his eyes and exhales like Gansey has stabbed him, or perhaps pulled him out of water. A quick and sharp thing. Just like Ronan.  
  
It's Gansey's turn to squeeze, to command, and Ronan opens his eyes.  
  
"I'm here." Ronan says, Gansey and Ronan. Ronan and Gansey. I'm staying. I came back. I am _coming_ back.  
  
Gansey isn't ready to let go of Ronan just yet. Ronan is familiar. Grounding. So much leveling and stabilizing for all the chaos and wildness rampaging in his bones. Ronan makes things real. Ronan cuts through the buzzing. He makes things so clear. Gansey feels untethered and unbalanced without him, scattered in a thousand buzzing and humming directions.  
  
He did not lose Ronan. Not tonight. Not this time.  
  
Ronan came _back_.  
  
Some part of Gansey thinks that Ronan will always come back. Reborn and eternal, perhaps never quite the same. Changing and sloughing off skins whenever he gets hurt. Innumerable lives and small deaths that change him but still bring him back.  
  
The rest of Gansey sees Ronan, bleeding out, Ronan pale in the hospital bed with his arms bandaged, Ronan with the sky on fire and that wild thing in his eyes. Ronan, his dreaming brother, who is just as mortal as everything else in this world. As mortal as a single bee sting.  
  
Ronan gives him a hard shake.  
  
"I'm _here_." Ronan repeats, impatience and need and importance making his voice a snarl. And Gansey understands, _really_ , he does, but it is overwhelming and Ronan has to understand that - _know_ that - "I'm _here_ with _you_."  
  
Ronan repeats it and Gansey nods.  
  
"It's you and me." Ronan says, softer this time, "It's you and me. It's never going to be anything else. You're fucking stuck with me, Dick. Deal with it. You had your chance, but now I'm here."  
  
Gansey smiles.  
  
"Until the end, I suppose. There are worse people to be stuck with." Gansey says, and their hands let go and their heads straighten as they turn to walk to the second floor together. The words pass between them without passing. Not quite yet ready to be made solid and real. Gansey understands. He will wait for Ronan to pull the words out, to shape them. He has waited for Ronan this long, this far. He can wait longer. Gansey is good at waiting for Ronan, through Ronan's silences. "Onwards and upwards together."  
  
Ronan's foot stomps on the first stair and he snorts, shoulder's rolling and overhead Chainsaw makes a sharp sound that sounds like one of Ronan's laughs.  
  
"Why do people even think you're the better one of us, I don't even fucking know."  
  
Because they have not seen you hold dreams and craft lives and tame monsters, Ronan Lynch. Gansey thinks. Because you won't let them know.


End file.
